Let’s be entirely clear. The city of Greensboro is not cash poor. It has huge amounts of tax and water revenues.
But it is never enough. We have seen many fee and tax increases over the years.
In addition to this tax increase, homeowners are now facing another huge tax increase because of the most recent round of tax revaluations. Because of the increase in the values of residential real estate, property taxes already were in the process of going up. (Recall that the city refrained from cutting the tax rate to eliminate this large increase due to the revaluation.)
During recent years, we have seen the city council initiate charity programs to help folks buy homes including subsidizing down payments and extending forgivable loans. They are now talking about sending city tax revenues to the county school board for the first time– a major change in policy. Yet they cannot see their way to fund fully the police department, which is their primary responsibility; and to bring police salaries up to a competitive level. The police department has had enormous difficulty attracting and retaining good police officers.
This is a city that is run by a bunch of socialists. It is ever-increasingly hostile to homeowners, and the interests of people who make the sacrifices to own their own homes. It relies on a form of politics based on envy and covetousness, resulting in an impulse to redistribute tax monies taken from some people to certain favored individuals and groups. It also is engaged in spending huge amounts of monies to satisfy other special interests.
I don’t advise buying a home in Greensboro. Go elsewhere if you are planning to buy a home.
TC: Good advice. That is why I call it the Peoples Republic of Greensboro. They have have a city Manager, a Deputy City Manager and 3 Assistant City Managers.
A peek at the organizational chart tells me that there too many Chiefs and perhaps not enough Indians. Or maybe there is fat everywhere.
City of Greensboro Organizational chart :
https://www.greensboro-nc.gov/departments
Fred, that chart has a lot of nonessential junk.
It’s a bad organization. This is the type of situation that corrupt machine politics– and left wing politics– produce.
GSO City Council is a bunch of realtors who rotate in and out of elected office to distribute money to each other. This isn’t governance; it’s a taxpayer-funded business.
Jaycee, you are right. And when they are not officially a realtor, they are doing the bidding of commercial realtors. And they ARE distributing money to each other– and those who are favored– in various ways.